Apt retorts

WRITTEN BY ALAB AYROSO FROILAN CARIAGA Why are there people who simply do not care if there are peasants being massacred, or if drug addicts and innocents are being killed in the streets, or if striking workers are being bloodily dispersed? Yet when these same people see graffiti calling for justice for these victims of oppression, they care to have the time to criticize these acts as nuisance to public order and cleanliness.

Even as behavioral psychologists say that the environment shapes people’s actions, the psychologists’ explanation falls short in explaining why the culture of indifference to oppression exists. There is also the question of who owns and controls the materials and institutions in the environment that enables them to shape public opinion and culture to their interest, including the perpetuation of the culture of indifference.

To desecrate the culture of indifference to oppression is a preemptive strike against the tyranny being perpetuated by the very same people who are perpetuating the culture of indifference. Protest art is this act of desecration. Protest art takes back the unjust world imposed on the masses, and enables us to shatter the cultural lenses that blind us from the concrete reality of social injustices and oppression.

After last September 21’s United People’s Action (UPAC) mobilization, outrage both for and against vandalism in public spaces broke out on social media in connection with the graffiti criticizing Duterte and the Marcoses over their respective human rights violations and their tyrannical regimes. Critics of the graffiti seemed to have their sights trained on red paint being the problem rather than the blood that already stains our streets.

The idea that “public” spaces must not be tampered with is a covert and subtle act of repression by which the state curtails available avenues for the expression of dissent. The maintenance of immaculate urban centers creates an illusion of peace, order, and development, and numbs the privileged to the chaos around them. This explains why urban poor communities are considered eyesores that should be demolished in exchange for the construction of malls and call centers and why they are being concealed with large boards, fences, and tarpaulins whenever important foreign leaders, such as the Pope, pay our country a visit.

Seeing the ills of society so brazenly splayed out in public chips away at that fragile illusion, thus the buzz that vandalism generates on social media, which in the first place is a platform dominated and owned by the privileged. Vandalism of these so-called “immaculate” spaces, whether on the walls or on cyberspace, disturbs the people’s complacency and indifference by making them feel that there is discord in our lands.

The feeling of disturbance creeps and crawls into their insulated bubbles, until they eventually pop. In this way, the role of revolutionary art which is “to disturb the comfortable, and comfort the disturbed,” is fulfilled.

In the status quo, art and the discourse of art itself remains in the hands of the elite as it excludes the oppressed and toiling masses. With galleries exclusive to those who have the luxury of time and money to afford the exorbitant entrance fees, who else would have access to the creative expression of ideas? For whom would the art be created? Museums, galleries—these posh creative spaces exclude the masses from the discussion of art. If the masses cannot exist in these creative spaces, then they must create spaces for their own expression, even if it includes vandalizing public spaces.

How a space is used changes the way society perceives it. During Marcos’ Martial Law, infrastructure were built, and art and artists were prized and decorated. They painted the image of a peaceful society, a society that appreciates culture and advances in its use of space. But these were mere cosmetics, to appease and fool the eye of an outsider.

To those alienated from the struggles of the masses that suffer extra-judicial killings, disappearance of activists, and suppression of the freedom of expression, among a myriad of fascist attacks, the sight of new buildings left and right seems a sure sign of “development.” It is by conjuring this false notion that Marcos led the country to a golden age that his children, Bongbong and Imee, were able to maintain their cloak of legitimacy, and with it their positions of power and ability to seek higher positions.

Choose to see the rage of the people in each artwork. Privilege dismisses the weight of protest art and perpetuates belief in the illusion of peace. Let every piece of art that resonates with us be our invitation to break from the comforts and bubbles of our privilege and join the people’s struggle to free themselves from the injustices and oppression that they are suffering. ●